I walked home that day and for the first time ever I couldn’t wait to get out of my riding boots.
I didn’t want to talk about it, but Nonna has a way of winkling things out of you. She could tell something was wrong and that night after dinner she sat down on my bed and we had a big talk.
“He’ll have forgotten you by tomorrow, you’ll see,” my nonna said. “With a bully, you have to ignore them, like you don’t care. Then this boy will give up and start on someone else.”
“I am!” I insisted.
I kept on ignoring him, just like Nonna told me. But it didn’t stop. The next day Jake managed to get the seat next to me again and spent the whole class whinnying at me, doing it under his breath, just quiet enough so the teacher couldn’t catch him. He did the same thing in the playground every time he walked past me, and by the end of the week all the other kids were doing it too.
“Do you want me to talk to one of your teachers about it?” Nonna offered.
“No!” I was horrified. “No, honest, I’m fine. Just forget about it …”
I stopped talking about Jake at home. I was worried that Nonna would tell Dad and then the next thing I knew he’d be marching into school to “sort him out”. I was desperate to avoid this happening – almost as desperate as I was for Jake to stop picking on me.
Dad worried about me in a way he’d never done with Johnny and Vincent, or even Donna. She had been a popular when she was at school. Now she was studying to be a beauty therapist, which accounted for the fact that she spent all her time at home practising her make-up in the mirror and painting her nails. We shared a closet – half each. Her half was overflowing. My half was all T-shirts and jeans.
“Can I try on one of your skirts?” I asked Donna.
“Why?” she looked suspicious.
“Because.”
“As long as you don’t ruin it.”
I pulled out her blue skirt with the black spots.
“Can I wear this to school?” I asked.
“Since when do you wear skirts?” Donna arched her over-pencilled brow at me.
“Please, Donna?” I went red in the face.
“OK,” she sighed. “I don’t like that one anyway – you can have it.”
I tried it on.
“It feels strange to have bare legs,” I said.
“You have lovely legs,” Nonna said.
“She has legs like hairy toothpicks!” Donna shot back.
“Donna, be nice to your sister!” Nonna Loretta warned.
“You need some shoes to wear with it,” Donna pointed out.
I looked at myself in the mirror.
“All the populars wear white trainers,” I said.
“Trainers?” Nonna asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Like white sports shoes.”
I looked at the shoes in my half of the closet.
“I can wear these I suppose.” I fished out my usual shoes – a pair of battered old red Converse and put them beside the skirt in my half of the closet.
The next morning, when I got home from helping Dad at the track, Nonna Loretta was waiting for me. She’d made me lunch and there was a box beside it on the kitchen table.
“What’s in the box?” I asked.
“Take a look,” she said.
They were white tennis shoes.
“I got them in a sports store on special,” Nonna told me. “That’s what they wear at school, yes?”
“They’re not the same,” I said. “These are tennis shoes.”
Nonna didn’t see the difference. “Try them on.”
They fitted me.
“There! They look very nice,” Nonna said.
On Monday I wore my new outfit to school. The skirt was a bit big so I put a belt on it. The shoes were so white they positively glared in the sunlight. I had English first period. I made sure I was early and got my usual seat at the front, but on the way out of class Jake caught up with me.
“Hey, Lola. Cool shoes.”
I felt sick. He was being totally sarcastic.
How could I have been so dumb? The shoes were totally wrong! I wished I could have just taken them off and walked around in bare feet, but that wasn’t allowed at school.
At lunchtime, I decided the best thing to do was go to the library so that no one would see my dumb white shoes. I was on my way across the playground when Jake spotted me. He was with Ty and Tori and Jessa. They began to walk towards me. There should have been a teacher on duty, but I couldn’t see one.
“Hey, Campione!” Jake cocked his head so that his hair flopped to one side then he pushed it back coolly with his right hand. It was his trademark gesture, like he thought he was in a boy band. He was so vain about that hair; you could tell he spent hours on it each morning before school. It was shaved short up the back and the fringe was long so that it grazed perfectly against his tanned cheekbones.
“Where’d you get your shoes?”
I kept my eyes down. I tried to keep walking past him, but he stepped in front of me and blocked my way.
I stepped to the left and Jake did too. Then to the right, and he matched me, like we were dancing. I could feel my face burning with embarrassment.
Jake stepped in real close to me and then he gave an exaggerated sniff, wrinkling up his nose.
“You might want to change those shoes again, Campione.” He grinned. “Because you still stink of horse poo!”
I heard the laughter buzzing in my ears and saw the smug look on Jake’s face. And that was when I threw the punch that broke his stupid nose.
Dad broke eleven bones in his racing career. You could see how his collarbone stuck out funny from the time when a horse went up on its hind legs in the starting gate and crushed him against the barrier. Another time he spent a week in intensive care after a three-year-old he was breezing spooked at a car horn. Dad fell and another horse running behind him struck him with a hoof on the head, shattering his helmet into pieces and knocking him out cold.
He fit right in with the other jockeys in the bodega, sitting around shirtless, comparing battle scars as they drank endless cups of black coffee. Most of them were on crazy diets to keep thin enough to make racing weight. Dad liked to “mess with their heads” by sitting right beside
